The Little Boy Mowed Down By The Mafia

Tiny
Domenico Petruzzelli got only three years of life on earth before mafia hitmen
riddled his body with bullets this week, in an attack that also killed his
mother and her boyfriend.

While
three-year-old Domenico Petruzzelli was being riddled with bullets in the front
seat of a car next to his 30-year-old mother, Carla Maria Fornari, and her
44-year-old boyfriend, Cosimo Orlando, his older brothers were “playing dead,”
huddled down in the back seat. The
horrific massacre happened Monday night on a lonely state highway in Puglia. When police first arrived on the scene, they
told reporters they thought it was a bloody car accident. Then they saw the
bullet holes. The assassins apparently first bashed the car Fornari was driving
several times, finally pushing it into a guardrail. Then they sprayed the front
seat with bullets. Orlando was able to
open the passenger door and fall to the ground. He died as police arrived. Fornari and her son died immediately from
their bullet wounds. “They were shooting at us and we heard screams and we saw
Cosimo collapse,” one of the surviving children reportedly told police,
according to the Italian press. “We were
scared to death.”

The
two young brothers, aged six and seven, described how they ducked down in the
back seat when the bullets started to fly.
They are now in protective custody as the only material witnesses to the
latest mafia-style murder involving a toddler. In January, three-year-old
Nicola “Coco” Campolongo was shot in the head at point-blank range with his
grandfather and his grandfather’s companion.
Their bodies were found singed in the burnt-out car in which they were
killed.

The
heinous crimes may sound similar, but they involve two very different powerful
organized crime syndicates, with two very different motives. Campolongo was killed in Calabria by the
‘Ndrangheta, one of the most powerful drug-trafficking crime syndicates in the
world. The assassins, who have still not
been apprehended, left a shiny 50-cent coin on the roof of the burnt-out car, a
clear sign of a debt-inspired hit.
Petruzzelli was killed in Puglia, home of the Sacra Corona Unita, a
powerful criminal group who are also involved in international drug
trafficking, as well as gun running, cigarette smuggling and human trafficking.

The
motives for the killing that took little Domenico’s life are still unclear, but
given his family tree, it was certainly mob-related. The investigating magistrate, Remo Epifani,
told reporters in Puglia that the likeliest scenario was that the Orlando was
the intended victim. Orlando, who was on
day release from prison after serving 13 years for a double-homicide committed
in 1989, had apparently started easing back into the drug trade he left nearly
15 years earlier. Investigators are working on the theory that he was perhaps
“in the way” and had to be removed. Fornari
was driving Orlando back to prison for the night when the hit took place.

Investigators
told Pugliese journalists that the hit could have also been against Domenico’s
mother, also a mob widow. Police note
she had testified against the assassins of her own husband in a mob-related hit
in 2011 when she was pregnant with young Domenico. The three men who were convicted of her
husband’s murder have sent people to threaten her from prison.

Intentional
child victims are rare in Italy’s long history of organized crime hits. Until now, criminals had abided by the common
rule that children should be spared.
Prior to these killings, the most famous child victim was Giuseppe Di
Matteo, an 11-year-old whose father was a Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia
turncoat. The child was kidnapped and
held for two years while various extortion attempts kept him alive. Eventually
he was strangled to death and his body was dissolved in acid.

On
Friday, Pope Francis will meet to pray with 700 families who have lost loved
ones to mob violence across Italy, no doubt making special mention of
Domenico. On Saturday, the anti-mafia
group Libera will read the names of 900 victims of organized crime at a
ceremony to mark the annual Day of Remembrance for innocent victims. Italy’s Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, who has
three young children, said he felt “a father’s grief” over the hit, calling it
“an awful pain, as a father as well as premier.”

The
mayor of Bari, Michele Emiliano, has called for children to be removed from
known organized crime families, whom he says know no other way but to pass down
their twisted “mafia pedagogy”. One of
the last videos of young Domenico uploaded to his mother’s Facebook site and
downloaded by Pugliese press shows the child destroying a wall with a pickaxe
while unseen adults cheer him on.

“The
Mafiosi can not have possession of good things,” Emiliano said at a press
conference after the killings in Puglia.
“There is nothing left to do but remove these children doomed to a life
of crime. This child had known nothing other than that life until he died. With all the warning signs, it should have
been an emergency situation to remove the children. Now his brothers might have a chance to
escape. But Domenico could have been saved, too. We all failed him.”